A CALL is being made to the Government to give Teesside collective city status.

Stockton North MP Frank Cook is urging Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to create a city-region.

The Labour MP says Teesside presents a fragmented structure to the outside world as a result of the last local government re-organisation and change of boundaries.

Mr Prescott is proposing a blueprint for the economic regeneration of the whole of the North of England, called the Northern Way Strategy for Growth - a plan that suggests eight city-regions.

Mr Cook says Teesside is unique in lacking a formally recognised city.

Arguing his case for the creation of the City of Teesside, the MP says in a letter to Mr Prescott: "It will, in my view, be very much more difficult for the Tees Valley to maximise its potential growth - and earn its proper place alongside the other greater conurbations of the North - so long as it remains in such a fragmented state without the sense of identity, pride and purpose endowed through city status."

He writes that, whichever way the vote for an elected regional assembly goes, "the only way in which my constituents and the rest of the Tees Valley can earn their rightful place at the 'top table' within the Northern Way is to give our central urban core the status it properly deserves - as the new City of Teesside."

Mr Cook said yesterday: "The facts speak for themselves - all of the other seven city-regions set out in the Northern Way have at their core at least one clearly defined and formally recognised city.

"We are the only exception, which is why I am urging John Prescott to recognise that this is an issue which can be fudged no longer."

Middlesbrough has long strived for individual city status - and been three times disappointed.

It made its last attempt in 2002, when it applied to be one of five towns in the UK that were granted city status as part of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations.